Despite putting up a tough fight, the Boston University men’s basketball team dropped their season opener to local rivals Northeastern University by a final score of 67-58 on Monday.
Head coach Joe Jones’ squad looks very different from last year. His top-six scorers from last season departed and the team welcomed eight newcomers, including four freshmen and two junior transfers. The lack of experience made playing away in a hostile Matthews Arena that much harder.
“In the second half, we got on our heels and didn’t really know what to do,” Jones said. “We’re coming back with no one that has done it, so no one’s been in a game where they’ve been the guy.”
The game was a tale of two halves. From the jump, the Terriers (0-1) challenged the Huskies (1-0) on defense, which resulted in Northeastern shooting just 27.27% from three in the first half.
Offensively, a motion-heavy system led to good looks from behind the arc for the Terriers, and freshman wing Matai Baptiste and junior guard Ethan Okwuosa combined for ten of the Terriers’ next 12 points to flip a 7-2 Husky lead into a 14-11 lead of their own.
“I thought we controlled the game in the first half,” Jones said. “We played a solid half on both sides of the ball.”
When BU looked to settle into their offense and work the shot clock to get quality looks, Northeastern pushed the tempo and used their aggression to catch BU off-guard.
By the end of the game, Northeastern shot three times as many free throws as BU and converted 15 of their 18 attempts. Graduate student guard Luka Sakota went 5-7 from the line, which led both teams in makes and attempts.
Down 34-31 after the first half, the Huskies started the second with an energy BU could not match. Northeastern established a three-quarter-court press defensively, and offensively, looked to get graduate student forward Chris Doherty involved in the paint.
With the Huskies’ defensive effort disrupting the Terriers’ ability to find good looks, the team looked to freshman guard Kyrone Alexander for a spark. Alexander, who ended up leading BU with 15 points with efficient 6-9 shooting, tried to establish an offensive rhythm for the Terriers with three 3-pointers in a row.
“He’s not afraid of the moment,” Jones said. “Nothing he’s doing is surprising me after what I watched in practice. Someone that thinks [about] the game as well as he does is … impressive”
After almost 30 minutes of a back-and-forth game, Northeastern went on a 8-0 run halfway through the second half. A Sakota 3-pointer forced BU to call a timeout, and the Huskies took a 51-44 lead that they never surrendered.
The Terriers tried to creep back into the game in the closing minutes of the game, but Northeastern answered each time to shut the door on any possible comeback. Down the stretch, Jones notably elected to sub out senior guard and captain Miles Brewster a few times, and instead gave opportunities to newer players.
“Defensively, he’s capable of being so much better,” Jones said. “But this is the first time he’s being looked at to score, he’s [being] looked at to defend, it’s a lot to do in your first game [of the season].”
The Terriers will now look to bounce back and get their first win of the young season at Rutgers University on Nov. 10 at 7 p.m.
“I’m going to wake up tomorrow and I’m going to feel terrible,” Jones said. “[I’m] going to focus on the things [we] got to get better at and then move to the next game.”
